Mailchimp for Beginners: Account Basics
Mailchimp is a fantastic way to reach current and potential future clients with minimal effort. Many different styles of e-newsletters can be set up to alert clients to new products, new services, website updates, and more! We send a monthly newsletter to our subscribers with post updates, client shout outs, recently completed projects, and much more.
Who should use Mailchimp?
Every business should have an active Mailchimp account! Email marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to promote your business, whether your goal is to build your brand or sell more products. These emails can be anything from automated RSS feeds sending a compilation of the new posts on your site to specially crafted messages. It’s all up to you! Modern email marketing is based on the principles of consent, segmentation, and personalization.
Choose a plan!
Choosing the right plan is wholely dependent on your audience. Most businesses we work with don’t need a paid plan, the free one works great! Pod Creative utilizes the free plan from Mailchimp and its a fantastic option to keep your marketing costs low while reaching up to 2,000 people. When first starting out with Mailchimp we recommend starting off with the free plan, you can always upgrade if need be! Below is a comparative photo highlighting the different plans available
Fun Fact!
If you decide to go with a paid plan, Mailchimp offers a 10% discount for 3 months when you use their two-factor authentication. Savings and security? Yes, please!
Set up your account!
Your primary account contact is just as it sounds, the primary account at which Mailchimp will send information to. We recommend setting the Primary account contact as the business information, with the business owner as the key contact name. You’ll input profile details, such as your website and physical address, and connect your social media accounts. A physical address is required by law on any email that is sent through Mailchimp, and must be the registered physical address of the business.
Once again for those not listening, you MUST use the registered physical address of the business as the address in your Mailchimp primary account settings. This is required by not only Canadian law, but anti-spam laws across the globe.
Set up your audience!
Your audience is an up to date record of all your contacts, and the foundation of your businesses email marketing tool. When creating your new Mailchimp account the set-up will assist you in automatically generating an audience for your new account. Mailchimp was designed so you only need one audience. There are a number of helpful audience management tools designed to organize and separate contacts. If you do decide to create another audience, keep in mind that data isn’t shared across audiences, and contacts who are in more than one audience will count separately toward your subscriber limit.
Set your Security preferences.
While it may seem trivial or overkill, it’s extremely important you go through the account security settings. Remember, Mailchimp not only sends out emails, but it also stores personal contact information such as the email addresses and names of your subscribers. We highly recommend setting up the two-factor authentication and verifying your account.
Set up your additional user(s).
Adding additional user(s) to your Mailchimp account is a great way to increase your security, and keep an eye on who has been doing what! While the free account only comes with one additional seat, it’s a good idea to set up an admin account for employees to use. Paid tiers of accounts have access to different types of users all with their own permissions.
Building your audience
When you first create your Mailchimp account the set-up assistant will help you generate an audience. You can also import contacts by uploading a CSV file, or copy and pasting contacts from a spreadsheet. If you import your contacts we recommend sending out a dedicated opt-in message, informing users they have been added to your electronic mailing list, and allowing them the option to unsubscribe. The Canadian Laws regarding anti-spam are in-depth and specific, you must: (1) obtain consent, (2) provide identification information, and (3) provide an unsubscribe mechanism. And Canada is not alone in their anti-spam laws! The United States and the European Union have their own set of anti-spam laws. Make sure you are familiar with all.
wrapping
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Creating a Mailchimp account is straightforward and a fantastic marketing tool. Make sure your security settings are in place and take advantage of the 10% off offer by setting up two-step authorization! Choosing the right type of account can be difficult, we recommend starting off with the free account and then assess whether you need to spend money. Make sure you respect the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission laws regarding anti-spam legislation.
